ASSIGNMENT

A critical look at the trends of how the use of the social media has dominated the dissemination of information and news stories have push the journalism profession to the edge of collapsing. An instance the use of the social media such as twitter,Facebook , Blog Spot and the likes in transferring messages across the media which is much fast and accessible as compared to the of the main stream journalism where messages are sent across with the use electronic, waves where its operate based on it reach coverage.Hence information sent across using the social media gets down well with the audience due to its wide range of coverage and its accessibility in view with the traditional media which is extensively used by the mainstream professionals.

Innovation has been the core element of this era, it is frequently said that society is living in an information age; hence it has pave the way for the provision of diversities of information technologies world over. These technologies ranges from phone, social networking to other devices such printers, multiple voice recorders that have boost the effect of good communication all over. In the view of this inventions led to the rise of the term citizen journalism, where ordinary individual have the edge to send news stories via the above mentioned social networking.

With rise of citizen journalism due to the advent of social media , a core element of new media, for the purpose of understanding , we love to fully expand on the term, how its personnel’s operate , it merits and demerit, and how it affect the activities of traditional media and lastly how to tackle these effects

A citizen is an individual who has the legal right to stay in a country.Citizen journalism is different from civic or community journalism, where the latter is perform by professionals ,however, to the ordinary man on the street, the former simply refers to an individual who send messages or information via the internet using the social media such Facebook,BlogSpot about an issue of concern for consumption of the general public. Aside the above basic knowledge of the term, other school of thoughts have come out with different definition to this concept. Courtney C  Radsch a school of thought,  sees term to mean an alternative and activist form of news gathering and reporting that functions outside mainstream media institutions, often as response to the shortcoming in the professional journalistic practices but is driven by different objectives and ideals and relies on alternative sources of legitimacy than traditional journalism. Also Jay Rosen proposes the term as’’ when the people formerly known as audience employ the press tools they have in their possession to inform one another’. From the definitions above, citizen journalism can be term as participatory or democratic journalism where the view of any concern citizen is taken into consideration as far as is news worthy. Also it can be ascertain the term as individuals taking the role traditional journalist by collecting, reporting, analysing and disseminating information via the social network.

Citizen journalist using the social media to play the journalistic role poses a threat to the traditional media.

WHY IS IT CONSIDERED AS A THREAT

Social media’s reach is wider than that of the traditional media. An example is that, a person might get into contact with an issue and reports it on Facebook. The message cuts across worldwide and different people from different places get to know about that issue unlike a traditional or mainstream media who in its operations might report on an issue and that would not have a wider coverage like that of the social media.

Also, advertising is much cheaper on social media than in the traditional media.  Now goods and services are advertised on Facebook, twitter, and on individual’s blog sites. It is well known that most traditional media houses depend on advertising for survival. Now that people choose to advertise on social media, the traditional media is affected financially.

Social media helps bring out creativity in the individual or citizen. Individuals who report via Facebook, blogs, twitter etc., don’t report only words but also attach videos and audio files and images which explain his or her reportage and makes it lively than that of the traditional media where you are restricted to a particular format.

 Some of the weakness of citizen journalism is their lack of training, personal interest and copy wright issues.

Professional journalism are properly trained to understand the libel law which regulates the style of writing for public consumption, hence they (journalist) knows what is lawful and unlawful in connection to the what is news worthy or not.An instance is during the recent presidential petition in Ghana; almost all the convicted of libel contempt were either not properly trained journalist or have not full grasps of the libel law. Another disadvantage of citizen journalism is the probability of the individual being bias, thus to manipulate the information to suit his or her course.  An example is the Boston Marathon bombing where a citizen journalism wrongly accused some individuals as the culprits of the properly to satisfy his or her on desires hence causing huge tragedy for innocent people and also slowing down police investigation.  Lastly the threat place on them by the copy right law, where individual use their information without their knowledge either to advantage or not.`   

HOW THE TRADITIONAL MEDIA SHOULD STRATEGISe TO MEET THE CHANGING TREND

The traditional media are now employing new media strategies in their way of disseminating news. They are now using the social media to interact with its audience. An example is that, most media houses employ social media representatives to help circulate their issues and get feedback as soon as possible.

Most of the reportage by citizen journalist via social media are rumors. Some turn out to be false since there is no censoring.  The traditional media could use their own social media to correct those rumours.

An example is an instance when an ex-footballer called Mohammed Polo tweeted that ‘’ I think Kelvin Prince Boateng is not committed to the Black stars’’. A journalist called Ransford Frimpong Prempeh debunked it using proper journalistic approach i e. researching on issue. He also did that via the social media.

To conclude, as it is popularly said that two heads are always better than one head and also, interdisciplinary approach is key to academic success. Based on the information presented above, we propose the traditional to take advantage of the invention of the social media to meet their handicap of information outrage and its accessibility